‘Woman or person who gave birth’

[Fooffmalooff]

I have recently been given a survey to fill in regarding care during pregnancy and birth. It’s an NHS survey.

One of the questions asks how you are related to the baby, be it birth partner, family member or ‘the woman or person who gave birth.’

I don’t know why but this has really annoyed me. Women give birth. ‘People’ (read- transgender men) do not. Absolutely fine if you identify as a man etc etc but even if you live like a man, look like a man, think like a man... if you are pregnant and having a baby, you are biologically a woman, no matter how you think/feel/look on the outside.

I just feel a bit weird about the inclusion of this on a survey which is intended for women regarding the most fundamentally female thing you can do.

Thoughts?

[WickedlyPetite]

It's the pushing of boundaries.

Talking about 'people who give birth' is simply one step closer to talking about 'men who give birth'.

[Binterested]

They are women. Always will be. It’s not kind to collude in a lie about this.

[Wereallsquare]

It is total and utter nonsense and I would cross it out and then say something. Why do I have to be accepting of or tolerant unscientific ideology? Why?

I do not want my children raised with this. If we as women just roll over, we will be crushed. Why does a tiny minority's imagined identify mean that the definition of a woman has to change? Why?

Women give birth. Women. There is no such thing as a pregnant man. C'mon.

[Binterested]

Who is saying men are giving birth?

The Guardian for one. Ran a series of articles about a man who gave birth. www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2019/sep/02/the-man-who-gave-birth-podcast

This is about erasure so I will not be told to be kind about it.

[bingbangbing]

Mother, is a verb though

[FannyCann]

One of the questions asks how you are related to the baby, be it birth partner, family member or ‘the woman or person who gave birth.’

The other thing I didn't mention is that presumably these questionnaires are handed out to people as above, the birth partner or family member.

This also erases Fathers! Obviously not every woman giving birth will have a partner/significant other and not every partner, if they are male, will be the father (I have known people embark in a new relationship whilst pregnant with another man's child).

Still, fathers, actual fathers are entitled to take pleasure in their new role. Are they not allowed to declare their relationship to the baby as the Father?

And a new Grandparent might also like to proudly announce their new status.

It's a rotten question, dishing out offence to all and sundry.

[Thisismytimetoshine]

mother is a verb, though*. But only performed by the female of he species. Nobody would ever suggest a male was mothering anybody.

[Wereallsquare]

This biology-defying language is not "inclusive". It is insidious. I refuse to accept it anymore and I will be calling it out every time I see it, no matter what the "nice", "kind", "cool" girls (and TRA tell me to) do.

[Middleagedmidwife]

I have a pregnant ‘ man’ as a patient!!! Really struggling with it tbh. Obviously I treat him with respect and kindness. It’s very hard to talk about birth with someone who feels they’re male when they got pregnant through their vagina and the baby is coming out that way!

[Wereallsquare]

"His" vagina. FFS. When will this madness end?

[TheProdigalKittensReturn]

"Persons" who are not women cannot give birth, so you're quite right to be annoyed. All this linguistic contortion to protect a tiny number of people from reality.

[FannyCann]

Middleagedmidwife
Thank god I'm not a midwife any more. I do hope you won't find yourself obliged to use terms like "front hole".
Maybe you can find subtle ways to reinforce biology by referencing the wonders of nature and our natural bodies or something along those lines. I genuinely mean that, not out of unkindness or passive aggressiveness - quite the opposite. Rather an opportunity to come to terms a bit more with their body and understand how it works. They will get through labour better if they are able to give themselves over to the instincts that we are all endowed with.

[AppleJane]

Correct me if this is wrong but didn't a baby die because a nurse misinterpreted a person's medical records and didn't realise they were in labour?

Personally, I think the medical staff have got enough to do and the baby should be the priority.

Having experienced trauma I understand what 'triggering' is but I would never dream of saying to someone 'you've just triggered me'. The word is in danger of becoming meaningless.

[HerewardTheWoke]

The problem with saying that "people" give birth and phrases like "pregnant people" is that they mask the fact that the physical burden of human reproduction falls exclusively on one sex class, females. We must demand that we retain clear language (like 'woman') to talk about this, otherwise we can't analyse the impacts pregnancy and childbirth have on females and how this disadvantages them relative to males. Women's role in reproduction is absolutely the basis of our inequality with men, and if we can't talk about that without using utterly contorted language then you are basically kneecapping feminist analysis from the start.

It's not inclusive to make women literally unmentionable in the context of pregnancy and childbirth.

[bd67thSaysReinstateLangCleg]

it’s really not that big of a deal as it affects no one but them.

Clearly it does affect the OP, otherwise she wouldn't have started the thread.

It costs nothing to be nice,

Apart from our language, single-sex spaces, same-sex HCPs, right to be same-sex attracted, sex-based rights, privacy, dignity, safety, and ability to identify male desire to exert control over female bodies as the root of all misogyny. So yeah, actually, it costs women a lot to be nice.

life is difficult enough

Try being female.

• In Ethiopia, teen girls are doubly-incontinent because of obstetric fistula after being married and impregnated before their bodies are ready to bear a child.
  British female prisoners have been locked up with convicted child abusers and rapists who can force them to be pregnant* through rape.
  
• Around 300 "pupil on pupil" (read boy on probably a girl) rapes are reported to the police every year in English and Welsh schools. And we all know that over 90% of rapes are not reported to the police, so lord knows how many thousands the true figure is.
  
• Somalian girls are held down whilst their clitorises and inner labia are cut and scraped off and their outer labia sewn shut.
  
• Women in the UK are wanked on ridng the train to work, yet rail companies keep removing guards from trains to save on wages because profit is deemed more important than women's safety.
  
• The Rape of Berlin by the men of the Red Army is just one example of wartime rape.
  
  I could go on for pages with that list§, but I need to sleep. These things are done to us because we are born girls, not because we identify as women. "Woman" and "man" are sex class and political class designators, not identities. To believe otherwise is to betray all women.
  
  
  § And one day, when I'm in a strong enough state of mind to cope, I will start a thread to do just that. I've been planning it ever since I saw a video of Hibo Wardere speaking and was in tears.

[PoolsOfSunshineThroughTheGlass]

bingbangbing mother is most commonly a noun but can be used as a verb - the first and second dictionary definitions of mother are the noun form.

It's a title meaning female parent (and has multiple other noun meanings too, listed before the verb option)

dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/mother

I'm sure you know that. No native English speaker seriously believes mother is only a verb - and indeed the word functions the same way in most languages.

[bingbangbing]

My point is, there is no reason why a trans man can't use the noun mother. They will mother the baby. A trans man can be a mother.

"Mothering" is not dependent on giving birth.

Removing the word mother from maternity documents is unnecessary and pedantic. It makes the mistake that only birth mothers are mothers, which is obviously not true.

We don't need to take it out. I am a mother. I mother my baby.

Single fathers mother their babies, as do adoptive parents, kinship carers, foster carers...

[PointlessAddict]

Elsie there is no such thing as a pregnant man. That's always the thing with transmen isn't it?They always get pregnant and bleat on about how it "triggers" them. Don't go and do one of the most female things that can be done then love

I agree. If a trans man is pregnant, they can’t possibly be “living as a man”

[MingeofDeath]

Mother has many meanings but when any animal gives birth it is a mother. Being a mother is a physical state of being, so a transman who gives birth is a mother, regardless their identity.

[BadCatDirtyCat]

The wording puts woman first and foremost then "person" (not man), so covering anyone who, for whatever reason, might not consider themselves a woman.

I don't see a problem.

[Binterested]

But there’s no material difference between them not considering themselves a woman and them considering themselves a man or a unicorn or a sea lion. They are wrong. Both on what they say they are not and on what they say they are. If they are pregnant they are women. I’m sorry for them if they hate that fact but it is a fact.

[NiceLegsShameAboutTheFace]

It is not nice or kind to refer to a human female as a birth giver to appease someone who deliberately gets pregnant whilst insisting they’re a man.
It’s incredibly insulting to women. Why does the tiny minority need to be pandered to, and women everywhere told to stop being big meanies by calling themselves women?

Precisely.

[NiceLegsShameAboutTheFace]

I have a pregnant ‘ man’ as a patient!!! Really struggling with it tbh. Obviously I treat him with respect and kindness. It’s very hard to talk about birth with someone who feels they’re male when they got pregnant through their vagina and the baby is coming out that way!

So, your patient 'feels' like a man? But wants to give birth to a child?

Apologies that I'm simply too thick to square that circle

[Chickenwing]

Get a life. What a stupid thing to care about.

[Datun]

The problem with saying that "people" give birth and phrases like "pregnant people" is that they mask the fact that the physical burden of human reproduction falls exclusively on one sex class,

This.

And if anyone thinks this is the work of a vanishingly small number of pregnant transmen, you're not paying attention.

Transmen, being women, don't have the power to force institutions to piss off 51% of the population. Especially the tiny number of pregnant ones. (And if they are pregnant, they certainly don't have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment as they have breached the terms by doing the opposite of living as a man.)

The power dynamic is exactly the same here. as elsewhere. It's women who are being erased.

Trans ideology demands that we ignore biology when defining women. Separating women from their biology and blurring the lines is necessary in order that the word, indeed the very concept, encompasses women with male biology.